Menu

Month: May 2014

Conspiracy theories are, generally, harmless. They may become a target of unhealthy obsession for their advocates, but they usually don’t harm anyone else in and of themselves. But this isn’t always the case. Sometimes conspiracy theorists can harm the people, and world, around them.

Agenda 21: a non-binding UN resolution calling for sustainable development. Passed in 1992 and signed by many world leaders, including George H. W. Bush.

But if you ask conspiracy theorists, Agenda 21 is something far more sinister. It’s a threat to American sovereignty, it’s a plot to take away your property, it’s going to destroy the Constitution!

And that’s why people fought an award-winning development plan in Baldwin County, Alabama and killed it in 2012. Smart growth and urban development had become something more:

“This battle is more than just planning,” the county commission’s chairman, Robert James, said that day. “This is to protect the Constitution of the United States and what’s in it and, to me, even the Ten Commandments that God gave us.”

In attacking the Baldwin County comprehensive plan, James, the county commission chairman, invoked the names of Hitler and Stalin, Mao and Mussolini, and how their “plans, guides, outlines” resulted in the deaths of millions of people.

So the League of the South had a billboard up in Alabama: SECEDE, only for this message to be understandably removed (source: Raw Story).

League of the South, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, calls for southern states to secede and set up a Christian theocracy ruled by “Anglo-Celtic” elites.

Who could object to such a charming bunch of folks? They value freedom so much they want to replace a democracy with a theocratic state.

“The message is not offensive, it’s not immoral or unethical,” said [League of the South co-founder] Hill, who concedes the message is controversial.

Ah yes, the ol’ “I’m not bigoted, because I said I’m not bigoted” defense.

Group members earlier this month protested the SPLC’s lawsuit seeking to overturn Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage, and Hill issued a press release at the time mocking the civil rights group’s officials as overweight, Jewish homosexuals.

Charming, mature intellectuals. I’d trust them to run a country.

“Is this America, or is it Stalin’s Russia, where you shut down any opposition and dissent?” [Hill] said.

Here, let me answer this for you: it’s America.

If this were Stalin’s Russia, you wouldn’t be allowed to put up a billboard urging seceding from the state. You’d be sent to the gulag, not have your billboard taken down by an advertising firm.

His message was brought down…by an advertising company, not the government. The government does not care. Hell, they didn’t do anything to stop the secession petitions on the White House’s own website.

It’s an amazing, yet persistent, persecution complex. The central assumption: you have free speech to say something offensive, but no one has the free speech to call what you say offensive. And America is just like North Korea or the Soviet Union because you might be asked to bring down that billboard urging secession from the country that you were freely, and legally, allowed to put up.

Here’s an amazing example of this line of thinking:

Sweden wants to build a perfect society. Just like Stalin! And they might not shoot citizens, but they do call racist people racist. Just like Kim-Jong Un!

Is your country like Soviet Russia? If you can ask that question freely, then the answer is no.

Today there was a tragic mass shooting in Santa Barbara. People are attempting to explain what motivated the shooter (rejection by women, according to a loathsome Youtube video posted by the killer), but one of the top minds of r/conspiracy has figured out…something?

The suspect is allegedly related to a second unit director on The Hunger Games. Hunger Games author lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. My God, that…means…nothing at all! Unless we believe the author of the Hunger Games has conspired with a minor member of the first movie’s crew to arrange false flag attacks, or…what?

Luckily, even the denizens of r/conspiracy call bullshit on this one, but it doesn’t seem to be a troll. It’s just…what?

Tonight is the NBA draft lottery. Instead of the simple “worst team goes first” model used by the NFL, there’s an element of chance to the NBA draft as the worst team only has a 25% chance of going first.

The claim first arose in the 80s, when the New York Knicks won the first pick. The envelope containing their logo, however, could be identified through its bent corner – leading to speculation that NBA Commissioner David Stern knew that envelope contained the Knicks logo and intentionally chose the large-market team.

Later the NBA switched to a different lottery system and refuse to show the draw. Further conspiracies surround the Cleveland Cavaliers being selected first, choosing Akron-born LeBron James, and the long-shot Chicago Bulls selecting native Derrick Rose first in 2008. And the then League-owned New Orleans Hornets (now Pelicans) were picked first in 2012. And that’s why the Bulls, Cavaliers and Pelicans are just swimming in championships today! Is the NBA draft rigged? Why won’t they allow cameras in?

They do, actually, and if they’re rigging it they’re doing a bad job. A video the NBA posted of the draft lottery shows the process: 14 balls are placed into a tumbler and four of them drawn. These four form a four or five digit number. Each team not in the playoffs is given many number combinations: 250 for the worst team, 5 for the least worst. They then pick for two more teams before allowing the rest of the draft to proceed in inverse order of record.

Why do the worst teams rarely win? A 25% chance of winning means a 75% chance of losing. It’s far more likely for a team to lose the draft with those odds than win first pick.

As the video shows, they can even pick the same team’s numbers multiple times and have to do it over again. How could you even rig such a random process, where the selection isn’t even done by people but automatically?

The NBA does show off the process on their website.

Why not show it in the open? What’s more dramatic – Adam Silver opening an unknown envelope and announcing the winner on stage, or a bunch of people slowly picking table tennis balls out of a tube and announcing numbers? Sometimes having to redo draws until they get a new team?

But let’s be honest. It’s not that the draft is rigged to fit certain narratives. People construct narratives to fit their idea that the draft is rigged. In a satirical article, Dan Feldman points out that you can build a narrative that “proves” it’s rigged in favor of any team.

No, the NBA draft lottery is not rigged. The only proof in the modern form of the lottery is people trying to invent reasons for the draft to be rigged for the winner – and you can do it with any team, if you want to.

The phrase “conspiracy theorist” is a derogatory smear phrase thrown at someone in an attempt to paint them as a lunatic. It’s a tactic frequently used by modern-day thought police in a desperate attempt to demand “Don’t go there!”

First paragraph and we have a Thought Police reference already!

We need a term for unwarranted 1984 comparisons. Perhaps a Space Lizard’s Law: If you live in a country where you can freely read and discuss 1984, then making a comparison to 1984 causes you to immediately lose any argument. (more…)

“We don’t ban domains, so throwing your arms up in outrage that a certain domain (owned by the former Grand Wizard of the KKK) was posted here is a futile effort on our part…please stop with this nonsense.”

So what story were they rushing to defend and how anti-Semitic was it?

“Revelations made in the latest issue of Newsweek magazine that Israel engages in massive spying against America are “anti-Semitic,” one of Israel’s leading newspapers has said—while their fellow tribalists who control the US mass media have blacked out coverage of the story.”

This is the kind of reporting you just don’t get in the LAMESTREAM MEDIA, because of reasons of “basic human decency”, that most cunning of conspiracies.

Postscript: the comments asking for the domain of, again, a notorious racist, to be banned are deleted because WE DON’T CENSOR BLARGH (except if you criticize, again, a notorious racist. Then that’s just mean and must be censored, clearly.)

"Look, you may be new here, but /r/conspiracy is where many top minds collaborate, and routinely outsmart the most well funded, well equipped and diabolical organizations on earth. How do we do it? Top thinkers, experts on every field, unparalleled investigative skills and fearlessness. I would trust a top comment here over pretty much any news source, especially a mainstream source, any day."